Bess of the Woods by Warwick Deeping

An hour passed, dragging its linked minutes like a snake crawling lazily in the long grass under the summer sun.

Bess, bound fast to the chair, sat like one weak after a long illness, the sunlight falling on the floor, to be reflected upon the brown beams of the old room. The girl's face looked white and apathetic against the dark background of an old linen-press. Her eyes stared out steadily through the window at the green woods bathed in sunshine, and the white clouds sailing slowly north across the infinite azure of the June sky. The life fire had burned low in her since Dan had struck her down in the woods. The shock of the night had not yet lifted from her heart. Old Isaac's pitiless gray eyes still haunted her, and she remembered the gleam of the barrel of the gun.